IBM boosts secure B2B processing

IBM has provided a timely fillip to the secure business-to-business market by unveiling a variety of Identrus-supporting products and opening a new security-testing lab in the US.

Identrus, which currently has the backing of 50 major financial institutions, is a global standard that enables large-scale business-to-business transactions and buyer/seller authentication.

Mark Greene, the general manager of IBM Global Banking, said the company's new applications testing laboratory had been designed to allow application developers to test their technology within the Identrus infrastructure.

Through its new Identrus-ready certification programme, Greene said IBM would use a series of "test harnesses" developed with the security vendor ValiCert to streamline a wide range of new business solutions for deployment in the Identrus system.

"Getting trusted payments is a focus for us so people can start to move money on the Internet between corporations," said Greene, who added that the task of building a solid foundation for Identrus had only just begun. "We're through the early days of the glitz," he said. "It's not always sexy work enabling online business."

Greene added that IBM's WebSphere software, DB2 Universal Database and eServer hardware were all Identrus-compliant and would be made available to application providers at the testing lab.

A number of other companies, including VeriSign, Baltimore and Safelayer, also produce Identrus-compliant products.

Breffni McGuire, a senior analyst at Tower Group, said, "If there's a worry out there in the industry that the technology or infrastructure hasn't been robust enough, this certification programme should help alleviate that concern."

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